The Problem: Sharing Data
Simply stated, computers need to share data. Many scenarios bear this out: Businesses need to share information with partners. Divisions need to send data to other divisions. Consumer applications need to work with other consumer applications.
Recently, Microsoft identified several different application types that could use Web services:
Data providers, for example, those that provide data such as a stock quote Business-to-business process integrations, such as those that send a purchase order from one company to another Integration with multiple partners, and even with competitors Enterprise application integration, for example, integration of a company's e-mail database with its human resources (HR) database
A typical use of Web services would be a help desk application. Help desk applications are often small Windows applications that enable help desk operators to query for internal customer data, and then update this data with whatever information they gather during the course of a help desk call. The developers of this type of application need to pull out information about each employee who calls from the central employee database. They also need to pull out and modify data from their own help desk database.
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